


The Drugs Don't Work [Cat in a Bag Remix]

by phoebesmum



Category: Sports Night
Genre: Alternate Reality, Angst, Family, Family Rydell, M/M, Remix, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-20
Updated: 2009-11-20
Packaged: 2017-10-03 11:03:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,685
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoebesmum/pseuds/phoebesmum
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sam Rydell didn't die in the crash that killed his brother David. Not quite.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Drugs Don't Work [Cat in a Bag Remix]

**Author's Note:**

> Written for RemixRedux on LiveJournal, February 2006 from BJ's original drabble _The Drugs Not Working_ (http://community.livejournal.com/sn100/37292.html), which in turn was written for SN100's challenge 'Ryan Adams titles'.

Casey's always hated this sofa. The wretched thing's so deeply cushioned, it's like being eaten alive by a giant marshmallow. Casey struggles to sit upright, but ends up sunk into the cushions, knees protruding at awkward angles, uncomfortable and ridiculous. The sofa came with the apartment, along with pretty much everything else around him, and is quite possibly older than Casey himself. The place is furnished in classic Little Old Lady, just the way it was the day Danny moved in, even though he's been living there, on and off, for nearly four years now; all there is to testify to his continued presence in the building are several crates of records, a stereo and, usually, his gym shoes in the middle of the floor. There's flock wallpaper, too, and a figured carpet that looks like a giant pool of vomit, and the curtains tie back with gilt-tasselled cords which are less Little Old Lady and more high-class bordello. Not that Casey would know. The bed, though - ah, the bed: the bed's six foot wide, and sprung like a trampoline. Casey _likes_ the bed.

As for the sofa, he hates it a little less when Dan's on it with him - when Danny kisses him, not much else troubles Casey; Danny's kisses don't leave much room for thought - but right now Dan, who is a careful and considerate host, has gone out to buy beer that he won't drink but Casey will, which has left Casey on his own with …

_"His name's Sam,"_ Dan had said softly, closing the door behind him, shutting them both out in the hallway. _"He's my brother. He … he can be a little bit difficult, Casey, if you don't want to stay, then don't, it's okay."_

And Casey had wondered, _Brother?_ He'd never thought about it - who Danny is, where he came from, how he came to be; never thought about anything but Dan himself and how Dan fitted into his life, filled up the missing places, matched him as though they were made for one another. Now that he casts his mind back, he realises that Dan has never mentioned his family, not once in all the years that Casey has known him, never let slip any personal details at all. Maybe these are not things that men share, necessarily, but Casey knows that Dan knows that _he_ has a mother, if only because of the panic last August when Casey had forgotten her birthday (and Dan had been his salvation, Dan had known a same-day florist and a gift company who'd deliver at the last minute, Danny had probably saved his life that day). He'd looked at Dan's hand, white-knuckled and trembling on the door handle, and he'd thought about it, he'd seriously considered taking the easy get-out that Danny was offering him, but it looked to him as though, if Danny had ever needed a friend, then that time was now, and shouldn't that be where he came in?

Although that wasn't what he'd signed up for. This was meant to be just another in a long run of Wednesday nights, boys' night in, watching a game, drinking beer - or Casey would drink beer, he's never seen Danny drink anything stronger than some weird Japanese energy supplement, and not even that very often - ordering in pizza, talking, laughing, reliving every great sporting moment of the last fifty years, planning out their futures and setting the world to rights.

That was how it had started. When they first began hanging out together, a month or so after Dan had come to work at the station, they'd alternated between Dan's apartment and Casey's, but then: Lisa. Lisa had been angry if they excluded her, bored if they tried to bring her into the conversation, and, then again: Charlie, Charlie, one year old, needing his sleep, adding his own contribution in the form of a thin, fretful wailing that neither Casey nor Lisa could still and, when Dan could and did, it only made Lisa angrier still. And so Dan's apartment it was, every Wednesday night, every Wednesday night all summer long. For beer. And a ball game. And pizza.

(He remembers the night it had turned into more: getting up to go, looking back, seeing the hunger in Danny's eyes, recognising it as though it were his own; turning round and grabbing Dan's shoulders, shoving him up against the wall, his teeth in Dan's flesh, Dan's head thrown back, long curve of throat open, vulnerable, begging to be traced by Casey's tongue, licked and sucked and kissed, Dan's arms outflung against the walls, Casey's hands banded tight around his wrists; the scores of fingernails tracking down the flowered wallpaper afterward, a ring of bruises marking Danny's skin like a charm bracelet the next day.)

Dan had been in college then, sophomore year. A summer intern, a summer fling, Casey had thought. But Dan never quite left: came back to New York, to this same apartment, time after time. Always let Casey know he was here. And Casey could never stay away.

(It was two months before that first phone call, Dan's voice, only surface-casual saying he was back in town, did Casey want to hook up? And yes, yes, Casey had wanted that. He'd wanted it so badly, in fact, that he had taken one look at Danny standing at the door and, wordless, had literally dragged him inside and thrown him down on the ugly carpet, had held back nothing, nothing at all: rug burns on their legs and arms afterward, stains on the carpet that Casey imagines he can still see even now; and Dan, curled around himself in a tumble of limbs, breathing raggedly, tears blotching his face so that Casey thought he might really have hurt him, tried to check if Dan was bleeding (no protection, no preparation, a blood test hurriedly booked the next day because Casey knew _he_ was clean, but who knew what Danny did when he was away, what he did, or who?), but Dan flinched away, said no, Casey, no, it's okay, and limped off to get cleaned up, and when he came back he was smiling, everything was fine - and Dan always did come back, no matter what Casey did to him, _begged_ for more, so Casey doesn't feel bad, even though he knows he should, knows this borders on abuse, knows that if he ever treated Lisa this way she'd have her bags packed and be out the door, and Charlie with her, before he ever got near to her again.)

Casey tries to focus on what's happening on the TV. He's already attempted, several times, to begin a conversation and has only met with stony silence, so he figures that the ball's not in his court any more. It's hard to concentrate, though, when he can feel - what was his name? Sam - Sam's stare on him, fixed, unmoving; he feels like a bug under a magnifying glass, can feel the flames licking around the edges of him. When he gets up to go to the bathroom, Sam's head turns to watch him go and, coming back, Sam's gaze meets him full-on, tracks him all the way back to the sofa, and fixes him there. Casey would like to make a joke - _"Think you'll remember me now?"_ or _"See anything you like?"_ but there's something about Sam, something brittle and dangerous, that tells him that that would be a bad idea.

Casey's pretty uncomfortable anyway. He's never been entirely at ease with disabilities, abnormalities - he knows it doesn't make him a very nice person, or a good one either, but he can't help that, it's how he feels - and when he'd followed Dan into the room, the sight of Sam's face had brought him up short. It'd been a struggle to keep the revulsion from his own face at the sight of the puckered, shiny skin that runs from temple to chin across Sam's cheek, the twisted claw of his right hand. It only makes it worse that, if not for the scarring, Sam would look exactly, _exactly_ like Dan, and the thought of Danny damaged in the same way _hurts_, more than Casey could have imagined.

He had never realised that he valued Dan so much. He'd tried for a long time to pretend - to Danny, to himself - that this was a casual thing, convenient buddy-sex. It's not. He knows that now.

He wishes he didn't. He thinks he might actually be in love with Danny. But then - once he'd thought that about Lisa, too. And see where that had got them.

He would have been happier never knowing. Because, again: Lisa.

Though it's all academic, really. Whatever it is, it won't happen tonight. Danny will not kneel before him, unzip Casey's jeans and take his dick into his mouth, won't let himself be bent over the sofa arm or the coffee table (once, the television, but that had been a bad mistake); the wide, wide bed will have no new stories to tell in the morning. Climbing the stairs Casey had been thinking of Dan every step of the way, running pornographic, Danny-centric movies in his head, ready, when he knocked, to fuck him in the doorway, right where he stood, and never mind the neighbours. But one look at the scarred, blank-eyed, not-Dan sitting huddled in the big easy chair had chased all those thoughts from his mind and, even if it hadn't, the thought of trying to have sex with Dan while his creepy brother listens from the next room strangles all Casey's fantasies at birth, if not sooner.

Eventually, it seems like hours later, Dan finally gets back. Sam's head swivels toward the door at the sound of the key in the lock; his expression, or lack thereof, doesn't change, and he still says nothing, not even when Dan speaks directly to him, asking gently if he's okay, if there's anything he needs.

Dan twists the top off a beer bottle and passes it to Casey, and Sam's eyes snap back to him - no; not to him. To the bottle; hungry, longing. Patting his brother on the arm, Dan goes out to the kitchen and brings back what Casey thinks at first is a glass of water, but when he looks again he can see it's not a glass, it's a soft plastic tumbler, like a child's beaker. Dan holds it out, saying coaxingly, "Here, Sammy. Here," and Sam takes the cup. He reaches out without looking, expressionless and blank, and holds it loosely in his hands, still not looking at it. Stepping back, Dan smiles, but only for a moment, because Sam moves then, suddenly, violently, dashes the water straight into Dan's face and hurls the cup to the floor. Dan gasps in shock, and Casey starts to his feet, ready to do - he doesn't know what, whatever Danny needs, but Dan shakes his head, water droplets spraying from his sopping hair, holds his hand up, flat-palmed, says, "No, no, it's okay, Casey, don't worry about it," and Casey sits back down, feeling useless, impotent and stupid. He reaches for his beer again, drinks self-consciously, aware of Sam watching his every gulp and swallow. He can hear Dan talking, trying to talk, trying to carry on a normal, everyday conversation, but the words fall into emptiness and die; Sam's presence in the room is like a black hole, sucking in light and sound and matter from all around it and turning it into silence and darkness and non-existence.

(_"Don't you understand?"_ Dan will say, hurt and bitter, when Casey finally says this to him, days, weeks later, _"That's how it is for him, that's how it is all the time."_ And Casey will have no answer to that: he only knows that he can't bear it, he loves Dan, he may even be in love with him, but he can't be there for him, not this time. He would, he wants to, he wishes he could … but he can't. That's all. He just … can't. And, realising that, he will all at once feel old, prematurely old, old and drained; the whole thing will suddenly get him down, down, and, just for a moment, he will think he understands what it is that Sam Rydell sees in the years ahead as they stretch out before him, spiralling downward, blank and empty, pointless and hopeless and devoid of any promise, any joy, unless it's the promise of eventual death. And what kind of a hollow promise is that?)

Dan has bought a six-pack, but Casey only stays for one; the strain in the room is more than he can stand, and, as much as he wants to stay, to give Dan his support, his sympathy, he finds he can't; he just doesn't have it in him. He's not that guy. Dan's eyes are sad as Casey drags himself out of the sofa, as he says goodbye, but there's understanding there. This is his burden; he knows that, he accepts it. He can't ask to share it with anyone else.

He presses the rest of the beer on Casey, and Casey takes it. Dan, he knows, won't drink it and Sam, he guesses … shouldn't.

***

He gradually manages to get the story, in fits and starts, over the next few weeks. There were three brothers, he learns, David and Danny and Sam, and when Danny started college David had helped him move his stuff down there, Sam going along for the ride. Casey is silent as Dan tells him, in short, careful words, how the two of them, David and Sam, had stopped by some old friends of David's before the return trip, stopped for a few drinks and maybe a couple of joints, and whatever the hell else they could score. How they'd never made it back. He hears about the phone call that had brought Dan home before he'd even finished unpacking, and about the silence that had descended on the Rydell house that night, and that had never lifted again. He hears about the weeks of camping out in hospital waiting rooms and corridors, waiting to hear whether Sam would pull through; how, once he had, it might have been better if he hadn't. About the decline of a brilliant mind (_"Sam was a genius,"_ Danny says simply, and, although Casey has his doubts, he believes that _Dan_ believes this), Sam's descent into depression and neurosis, slow at first, then faster and faster; about the growing, now chronic, drug dependency, and what was finally diagnosed, rightly or wrongly, as paranoid schizophrenia; about committal, and parental rejection, and the long, painful climb back to some degree of health, just enough that Sam is now considered well enough to move into Dan's spare room and live there for …

"How long?" Casey presses, and Dan only shrugs, not meeting his eyes.

"As long as it takes," he says.

_Which leaves us - where?_ Casey doesn't ask it aloud. He knows he doesn't want to hear the answer.

"I owe him," Danny says, swirling the melting ice cubes around the dregs of his club soda, picking the lemon slice out between unsteady fingers and biting down on it. Casey watches his mouth pucker, remembers that mouth, swollen with his kisses, remembers what else that mouth can do, those lips, that tongue. He _aches_ now, aches for what they can no longer have; lies awake remembering the taste of Danny's skin, yearns for the weight of Dan's cock in his hand. When he asks why, his voice is harsher than he means it to be, and Dan's eyes lift, fix on his, huge and wounded.

"Because," he says quietly, "Because the way he is now - that's the way I was shaping up to be. Sam broke, and I'm the one that got fixed. I owe him, Casey. He's my little brother, and I owe him _everything_."

Casey still doesn't understand. He says so. Dan only shakes his head sadly.

He orders another drink, and doesn't watch as Casey walks away.

***


End file.
